Bumping into stars makes fliers' trips unforgettable

Road Warrior Richard Laermer says his attempts at small talk didn't go far with singer Neil Diamond when they sat next to one another on a red-eye flight from New York to Los Angeles two years ago.

Laermer, the creator of a new social-media website, ThankBank.net, says Diamond wasn't friendly and may not have wanted to be interrupted as he attempted to write song lyrics on a legal pad in the first-class cabin of the United Airlines flight.

"All he did until bedtime was write lyrics and rip them up," says Laermer of Ridgefield, Conn. "It was one of those periods where you realize how hard it is to get anything done to your satisfaction."

Laermer is one of many USA TODAY Road Warriors -- some of the world's most frequent fliers who voluntarily provide travel information -- who have encountered celebrities during business trips.

For many of them, their brush with the famous was unexpected and brief, and later became fodder for cocktail conversation. But some Road Warriors say their interactions pro-foundly affected their lives.

After watching Diamond attempt to write lyrics, Laermer says he had a few sleepless nights.

"I always thought of him as a troubadour, and it turns out he is a worker bee," Laermer says of Diamond. "It made me think a great deal about the creative process."

Laermer says he has since spent more time working on flights and prepping for upcoming business meetings.

A presidential moment

Road Warrior Lou Heckler says former president Jimmy Carter had a lasting effect on him after an unexpected encounter at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Heckler was in a Delta Air Lines lounge in the 1980s when Carter -- after his presidency -- walked in and went to a private room. Surrounded by Secret Service agents, he later boarded Heckler's flight to Atlanta.

"President Carter walked the entire length of the plane and shook hands with everyone," Heckler recalls. "It wasn't a cursory handshake, either. He looked us in the eye, smiled and gave a firm hand."

Heckler, a motivational speaker from Gainesville, Fla., says he was "struck" by Carter's humanity.

"He could have settled in at his first-class seat and ignored us, but, instead, made a point to acknowledge every passenger," Heckler says. "Any time I am in a leadership role, I think of that and hope I can show the same humanity."

Road Warrior Brian Matos of Frisco, Texas, says he also shook hands with the former president on a Delta flight from Atlanta to New York in 1992. "He walked through coach, shook everybody's hand and apologized for delaying boarding of the aircraft," recalls Matos, who works in the supply chain industry.

Charles was "a gentleman in every sense of the word," says Matos, who sat one row ahead of the singer in first class on a flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland in 2000.

"I told him the way he sang America the Beautiful made me think it ought to be the national anthem," Matos recalls. "He said that was one of the nicest things anybody ever told him."

Charles and the other three celebrities had an effect on his life, Matos says.

"All the encounters taught me that famous people are, for the most part, just regular folk," he says. "If you give them a chance to act like regular folks or fellow travelers, they will take you up on it."

Meeting sports legends

Road Warrior Warren Kurtzman of Raleigh, N.C., sat next to football great Franco Harris on a flight from Pittsburgh to Erie, Pa., more than 20 years ago and realized that famous people -- like regular folk -- can be unsure of themselves.

Kurtzman, now president of a media research company, was scheduled to speak at an Erie advertising club luncheon.

"In an ironic twist, it turned out that Franco was heading to the same luncheon, which immediately told me that I was apparently his warm-up act," the Road Warrior says.

Harris, who had retired from the National Football League a few years earlier, said it was one of his first speaking engagements, and he was nervous, Kurtzman says.

"It was striking coming from this huge guy who I had seen run over people on the football field countless numbers of times," Kurtzman recalls. "Conversely, I'm less than 5-foot-6 tall and weighed at the time no more than 150 pounds. Giving a luncheon presentation came naturally to me and didn't cause any nervousness."

The encounter, Kurtzman says, "was an early lesson" about "how we're all good at different things and will be successful if we can find those things and make them our lives' work."

Road Warrior Ed Grooms says he cherishes the memory of his Los Angeles-Philadelphia flight with Muhammad Ali sitting next to him in 1999. He says the effects of Parkinson's disease on the former heavy-weight champion were apparent, and the encounter taught Grooms to appreciate his good health.

"He struggled to get the straw for orange juice in his mouth, and I reached over and steadied the cup for him," says Grooms, a consultant in Taylors, S.C. "He was appreciative and nodded. I will never forget his comment: 'My mind is still strong, but the body just won't work.' I almost cried for him."

Road Warrior Charles Stein of Dublin, Ohio, says he and many people he has prepared meals for have benefited from meeting chef Paul Prudhomme a few times while dining at the chef's restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, in New Orleans.

Prudhomme invited Stein into the kitchen, where they talked for a few hours, and, on another occasion, asked Stein and his wife, Candy, to join the chef on his radio show.

"To this day, I fix his dishes to rave reviews," Stein says. "There are so many memorable food experiences that he opened to me."

Beverly Hills-based Road Warrior Richard Boyd says he's been on many memorable flights with famous people aboard, including tennis star John McEnroe, Tatum O'Neal, Stevie Wonder and Vin Scully.

Though none of the encounters was life-changing, sitting next to the late Stanley Marcus, the former Neiman-Marcus chairman, on an Atlanta-Dallas flight resolved a lingering problem.

Months before meeting Marcus, Boyd bought a suit from a Neiman-Marcus store in San Francisco, and "the lining in the pants disintegrated," he recalls. The store asked him to return the pants for mending and then misplaced them and the accompanying jacket.

When Boyd mentioned the incident to Marcus on the flight, the luxury retailer heir made an in-flight phone call and then told Boyd to stop at the store the next time he was in San Francisco.

"I was allowed to select any suit in the store as compensation for my loss," says Boyd, who works in the entertainment industry. "I still have the Armani in my closet."